Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence is the first secular building of the early Renaissance and was commissioned by the Medici family in 1444 with the architect Michelozzo in order.

Architecture

The palace is divided by projectiles with different underpinnings in three levels. The ground floor has a masonry from unsmoothed, little carved stone, which is very reminiscent of the castles and to express "Stable ". There were also stables, kitchens and homes of employees. The first floor is separated from the ground floor outside by a dentils and cornices. There are also the coat of arms of the Medici family, the windows are decorated and the masonry consists of smoothed stones.

This floor was the living and Repräsentierstockwerk, also called the "piano nobile ". The second floor is very withdrawn and plastered. In it were the bedroom and storage rooms. Especially by the housing loses its defensive character. The palace has a square courtyard, leaving only relatively small and narrow spaces are arranged around it.

This palace was commissioned by Cosimo Medici the old 1444 to the architect Michelozzo in order with the intention not to be glorious to leave him, lest the envy of other patrician families am excited. Cosimo Medici was then the most powerful among the approximately 80 bankers of Florence. The palace served both as a residence and as a seat of global Medici Bank. Michelozzo built about 20 years at this palace ( completed 1460 ).

The building is a typical example of the architecture of the early Renaissance in the civic palace: a closed, wide -bearing, cubic, mostly three-storey building of clearly structured monumentality, a smooth wall surface with strict geometric forms of windows and doors in long, regular ranking, almost unsightly. The emphasis on simple geometric shapes took over from Brunelleschi Michelozzo, who had introduced this principle in the interior of San Lorenzo 20 years before 1420.

A simple rustication marks the ground floor.

What was the social situation this time? "As more and more workers entered into the city, the situation of the feudal lords intensified. Artisans and serfs escaped their obligations to the lord by fleeing to freedom. Even very generous prince could rarely compete with the attraction of city life.

The politically and economically wisest of these lords attracted rather own in the city before they lost all their subjects. Simply built their rural strongholds in the form of urban tower systems new, which were almost completely shielded from the rest of the city, and transplanted their subordinates in these walls. The situation came to a head in proportion as more and more of these landed gentry moved to the cities. Each of these Consorteria called noble houses vied with the other and with the city's governors to maintain the loyalty of their subjects and thus their economic and military support. Each built for itself the maximum tower to demonstrate its rights and powers over those claimed by him subjects. Italy's city silhouettes were too small Manhattan. "

Among other things, as came the rural military architecture in the city. And of these communal palaces in turn derives the form of the noble palace ago as here, the Palazzo Medici Riccardi.

The atmosphere of this architecture, which passes through all three historical variants - gender Tower, Municipal Palace, aristocratic palace - this repellent Wehrhaftigkeit occupied the social situation of that time, the latent high-tension competition of individual families and groups that could go up to the mutual murder. This architecture represents the stylistic and thus psychological counterpoint to that of Venice, which always stressed the openness pursuant to secure social conditions within the city. The completely different, aggressive atmosphere in Florence also led to a different architecture. Whether such an architecture has not even turn cemented and promoted the social tensions is another question.

From the late seventeenth century the rear architecture, interior layout, and a large part of the interior decoration over the original rinascimentalen system of the Medici Riccardi and family ( who had subsequently acquired the palace ) were fundamentally changed. The central and most important features of these supplementing baroque phase is designed by Luca Giordano Galleria Riccardiana the second floor.

The Adoration of the Child by Fra Filippo Lippi

Famous Palazzo Medici Riccardi is because of a treasure on the first floor of the Interior, the family chapel, which has been painted from the summer of 1459 by Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes. You have the theme " The train of the Magi " and their decorative beauty stands in stark contrast to the rugged exterior of the palace. The Dreikönigszug is distributed on three walls of the chapel, each fresco one of the ways is true.

In the central small choir chapel you can see the image of the " worship" of Filippo Lippi, also originated around 1459. To this worship around the entire fresco cycle by train St. Three kings created. This chapel was not only a place of worship, but it also served as a reception room for delegations and rulers.

Ever such a devotional picture that hangs in a bourgeois palace in a private chapel and not in a church, was not at that time of course, but a new feature of painting. This genre of domestic devotional picture reached a climax in Florence in the late 15th century. The emerging and self-confident bourgeoisie developed an increasing need for a new style of painting which, although was outside the church space, but that should not be profane. That is, it should continue to ecclesiastical subjects are shown, but they were not intended for the Church.

And that created a new situation for the contemporary art of the 15th century. She served from then on two main areas: first - as before - the traditional authorities, ie the representative foundations for the Church rooms and public buildings, and secondly equal - and that was new - for the private mansions, villas and town houses.

Only now have focused on the domestic devotional image as a separate subject in the center and is no longer formal similarity of the cult images of sacred spaces dependent. This scene from Lippi can be taken as an example of such a new genre, as a carve-out of the scene of the Adoration of the actual Christmas story.

The monk was not originally on the historical scene. He is exemplary here as someone who is thinking about the meaning of Christ's birth. He looks out of the picture, is not involved in the subject under Alberti's demand for a figure to the introduction to the subject of the image. There are also " mental images " shown in this new genre, which a monk " hallucinatory " experiences ( " mental images " ), for example, John the Baptist in the direct Nativity.

All riders of the fresco cycle move from left to right, the fresco is so readable. The whole train is moving away from Maria and returns to her. The image of Lippi belongs into this context a central location.

This oil painting is officially seen the real, the spiritual center of the whole cycle. The statement of the arrangement of all the scenes is: The observer should draw exactly like those shown Magi with his heart to Christ. But this official occasion of the frescoes result is more a pretext, a frame idea to represent the entire Medici family on the occasion of a magnificent procession with their participation in the Council of Florence in 1439 ( In the background are the child John the Baptist and the praying Bernard of Clairvaux shown ).

The, Dreikönigszug 'by Gozzoli

Gozzoli renounced here largely on the new technical achievements of the painting of his time, especially in the perspective constructions. He focused instead on the magnificent view of the costumes and the many eminent personalities. The quality of Benozzos painting is therefore assessed in comparison to other artists of his time often much lower and rather considered as a political- cultural witness because as artistic.

On the right wall is in a cut - probably - Lorenzo Medici portrayed as one of the three kings. A guide of the late 19th century wanted to recognize historical persons in the many forms of this cycle, particularly members of the Medici family and leading political and religious figures. This often unprovable assertions that a Guide have now been repeated so often that one thinks that it is all proven. Today's science is much more cautious in such identifications.

In the figure of the youngest of the three kings of the grandson of Cosimo Medici occurs Lorenzo, which will make later as " Lorenzo the Magnificent " Florence into an artistic and intellectual center of the Western world. Gozzoli seems to have sensed the coming size of the then ten - or eleven-year old boy, because he has moved away it from the rest of the family something.

That it is indeed Lorenzo, is beyond question. One needs to look into the child's face not only the similarities with his mother Lucretia Tornabuoni, from Lorenzo with the myopia also inherited the protruding eyes and the hazy look. The laurel that wraps around his torso, satisfy the seven spherical fittings on the bridle of his horse, and ostrich feathers tassels as unmistakable landmark of the Medici.

This fresco cycle is not pure fantasy construction. The Medici actually held such removals. They even founded confraternities for this purpose. The whole Christmas story was listed in the city with about 200 riders on St. John in 1445, for example. And this move would have shown even in their private chapel of the Medici.

In the left part of the fresco of Lorenzo Medici of Gefolgszug is shown. The colors, the Gozzoli painted this fresco cycle was at its time unprecedented. Only much later, a similar fairytale colors abundance was reached in the Venetian painting.

Gozzoli portrayed here the most important members of the Medici family, accompanied by several members of other Italian dynasties. The cavalcade has left the mountains behind and has got into the plane. The core of the procession is the group of older Medici, their friends and followers. Also Gozzoli himself is, he has provided his red cap with the signature. Among his sides two bearded Byzantines can be seen. In fact, the guests from the East can not be identified solely on the fairy tale splendor of her outlandish clothing, but also on facial hair. In Florence, the Republican habit of shaving held throughout the 15th century through.

From left to right appear here - supposedly - Cosimo the Elder, the real founder of the Medici dynasty - this is a write-up that is doubted particularly evident today, as there is hardly a likeness; then you see something in the background Giovanni, his second son with a headscarf, and finally right, recognized by the tall red hat his firstborn Piero de ' Medici, called the Gouty - il Gottoso - the father of Lorenzo. In the aftermath of the Medici show two dominant Italian princes and military leaders: left Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, and right Giangaleazzo Sforza, future Duke of Milan.

In the presentation of horses every opportunity is used by Gozzoli, to demonstrate the detailed splendor of his painting in the drawing of the bridle. The wealth of the Medici is also apparent in precious dishes of the horses and the ornate clothing of their servants, such as a black servant who holds the hunting bow his master, and also right in the caring groom, which monitors the horse Piero ( on chest he wears a coat of arms Piero, a ring with Fotomantspitze. 's motto " semper " (always) is written on a tape. ). Gozzoli's penchant for detailed description of the clothing may be due to that his father was Wamsmacher, Gozzoli was so dedicated from childhood in the manufacturing process of garments. And then certainly plays his apprenticeship with a goldsmith Ghiberti as a role.

The landscape as a subject of painting has long been of minor importance. The revival of the Middle Ages largely lost interest in a largely realistic depiction of nature is one of the main features of the humanist spirit flow. To what extent this view of a landscape here is truly " realistic " in Gozzoli, is debatable. In this way the nature Renaissance saw the appropriate framework for their new idealized people here than adequate space for the procession of the Medici family.

These natural formations are not direct realistic descriptions, but here is a clear creative will effectively who pays attention to order and geometry. This is not a wild, natural creation, which is the ideal of a parent from the human world.

The humanist Giannozzo Manetti comments: " Everything that surrounds us is our own work, the work of man: houses, castles, villas, magnificent buildings which seem to have sprung from angel hands are created by human hand [ ... ] At the sight of such we see wonderful things that we are capable of wonderful creations, perfect as everything past times produced. People dream no more, to become angels, they are even angels who descended from heaven, and have accepted the daily figure of the people. "

With the humanist the flow was associated an emphasis on the active social life, in contrast to the medieval negative of rules - and that also had significant political impact. The man wanted to join in social affairs and make them and they do not worship such a God-given eternal order. Religion was not abolished, but the man was as, political animal ' part of the theocracy, active and not passive part Receiving.

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43.77527777777811.255277777778Koordinaten: 43 ° 46 ' 31 " N, 11 ° 15' 19" E

• Renaissance building in Florence
• Palace in Florence
• Michelozzo